


be very careful if you don’t know where you're going (because you might not get there)

by firstlovelatespring



Category: American Vandal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Season/Series 02, Season 3, Softball, The Author Watches Too Much Baseball, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 18:04:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18036245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstlovelatespring/pseuds/firstlovelatespring
Summary: American Vandalseason 3. Including but not limited to: witchcraft, softball, lesbians, lesbians who play softball, repression, angst, and Peter Maldonado's impossibly long eyelashes.





	be very careful if you don’t know where you're going (because you might not get there)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chosenfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chosenfire/gifts).



Today is the first day of shooting for _American Vandal_ season three. Peter wasn’t sure about it at first, taking a gap year to make another docuseries examining the secrets of teenage life, but now that he’s here at La Panza High School setting up the camera, it feels like this is what he’s supposed to be doing. The Netflix executives opted not to renew their contract for another season, so Peter decided to take things into the supernatural territory: they’re investigating a case of alleged witchcraft. It’s hard to be back to making a series for Vimeo, but Peter has to believe he made the right choice in coming here.

Sam comes into the room, holding Michael’s bag filled with markers and post-its and pens. He sits on the table and immediately starts swinging his legs. “You ready?”

Their first interview is scheduled to start in ten minutes. Peter nods. He really, really is.

Sam has just finished moving the chair into just the right place in front of the camera when there’s a knock on the door.

“Hey, guys,” a girl says, poking her head into the classroom where they’re set up.

“Hey, come on in!” Sam says, and she does. “We’re ready, you can sit right here.”

“Is there anything in particular I should…. do?” she asks, sitting down. Her legs are crossed, and she’s fidgeting with the star of David bracelet on her wrist.

“No, you’re perfect,” Peter says, smiling at her reassuringly. He starts recording on the main camera. “Just tell us what happened. Whenever you’re ready.”

Before she starts to talk, Peter is already imagining how he’ll edit it together in his head. Footage of her fielding ground balls at shortstop, taking batting practice, giving a pre-game motivational speech to her team, all under his narration: _This is Chani Friedman, shortstop and captain of the La Panza High School softball team. She emailed us earlier this year about a series of unusual events that have been happening at her school_.

“So, Chani,” Peter says. “Tell us what’s been going on.”

“Our softball team—don’t laugh at me, okay? Our softball team is cursed.”

Sam does snort a little bit from behind the camera, but they can edit that out later.

Chani continues, frowning. “It all started in the first home game of the year. Julianna, our ace pitcher—her rotator cuff tore, right in the first pitch. Even though she does all the stretching and exercises she’s supposed to do, doesn’t overwork her arm, everything. It just _snapped_ . And then there was the no-hitter against the Tigers. Nine innings, not one hit. That just… doesn’t happen. Not in high school softball, especially not to our team. We made it to league championships last year. After that, I think we all had our suspicions that something not entirely natural was going on, but then the next week, we really knew. Someone had lined something into the softball field.” That’s the picture Chani included in the email, what first caught Peter’s eye. The _Vandal_ email account receives so many pictures of drawn or spray-painted or pesticide-ed genitalia, but never anything like this. “It was a pentagram. Right in left field.

“So, we went to the principal, Mr. O’brien. We told him, basically, our team is being cursed, and the administration isn’t doing anything about it? And he just ignored us. No one in the administration is a believer. Some people have been trying to get a class on modern witchcraft added as an elective for years, but O’brien won’t budge.” There are a few photos from Facebook, an event in support of adding the class that Christa Carlyle would be proud of. Chani is visible in the back of the photo, with a couple of other girls in LPHS softball hoodies.

“And then, since Mr. O’brien wouldn’t do anything about it, people just started pointing fingers. Most people think Alexis Moskowitz did it,” Chani says, pained. “But we—we grew up together, and I know she would never do something like this.” Chani helped them find photos of her and Alexis: as toddlers playing in the sprinkler, kids on the playground, preteens dressed up for a school dance. It’s cute, seeing how they’ve changed over the years, Alexis’s clothes getting darker and Chani’s hair shorter. “She is into witchcraft, but she would never do this,” Chani says again.

“So that’s why I emailed you guys. The season is almost over, and it’s our senior year, and I want Julianna to be able to play again. Her shoulder still hasn’t healed, and I know it’s because of the curse. We’ve been playing together since little league. Since forever. And she’s my girlfriend. I want our last season together to be great,” Chani finishes. She fixes Peter with a dramatic stare for a moment, until he gives her a thumbs up and she relaxes.

“That was great, Chani, thank you so much,” he says.

“No, thank _you_!” Chani says. “I watched your show and thought you guys were probably skeptics, but that I’d try sending an email anyway. I’m glad I did.”

Peter is, too. He didn’t believe in the curse at first, but after scouring the internet and making several trips to the library, he’s been converted. Witchcraft seems unlikely, sure, but stranger things have happened.

He and Sam bid her goodbye and start setting up the room for the investigation.

“You should’ve led with the ‘main contact is a butch lesbian’ thing,” Sam says, sticking thumb tacks into the corkboard, “and not the witchy shit. I would’ve agreed to this project a lot quicker.”

“I should have led with the butch lesbian thing,” Peter repeats incredulously, “instead of the actual witchcraft.”

Sam smirks. “I mean, yeah. Solidarity, dude.”

“She didn’t actually say she was a lesbian,” Peter says, although he privately agrees with Sam that Chani probably is. “You shouldn’t stereotype.”

“Yes I absolutely should. Um, short hair, captain of the softball team,” Sam says, counting on his fingers. “And it’s literally right there on her Instagram. Some investigative journalist you are.”

“I was a little busy actually researching the case,” Peter says, but he pulls out his phone to check anyway. Chani has a tasteful rainbow flag at the end of her profile, just like Peter does. Despite all the research, he was nervous about this project, about taking on something so unlike the twenty-seven dicks or the turd burglar, but this feels like a good omen. Like he and Sam are in the right place, doing the right thing.

* * *

Now that the scene has been set by talking to Chani, Peter wants to get a good timeline. There’s going to be a nice computer generated graphic when it’s all cut together, because even without Netflix they can afford that these days, but for now, Sam sets something up with photos and string. First on the corkboard is Julianna’s arm, on the tenth of September.

Julianna comes in for her interview after school the next day. Her arm is in a sling across her chest, and she takes an Ibuprofen before they start.

“Why don’t you start by telling us a little about who you are,” Peter says once she’s all mic'd up. “You can look at me, not at the camera.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’m Julianna Avila-Tober. I’m a senior, a pitcher on the softball team. Or, I usually am,” she adds, lifting her slinged arm. “I want to go into chemical engineering, I guess. And I like hiking. Is that enough?”

“That’s great,” Peter says. “So, tell us about the day you hurt your shoulder.”

Julianna takes a deep breath. “It was the first home game of the season,” she starts. The local TV station airs high school sports games, so there’s no shortage of footage of that day for Peter to make into a montage behind her words. Players taking batting practice, fielding ground balls on the outfield grass, stretching before the game. “I was really nervous all day that day, which is weird, because, not to sound conceited or anything, but I’m a good pitcher. Really good. So I was nervous, and we were all excited for the season to be starting. I went through my warm-up. I have this routine I do before every game, and it all went according to plan.” This is where the montage would end and the camera would return to Julianna. She has become visibly more relaxed as she talks about softball, clearly at home. “I felt like it was going to be a good game, you know? Sometimes you can just tell.”

Peter and Sam nod, although neither of them have been on a baseball diamond since fifth grade little league.

“And then—” There’s a distance shot of the first pitch, and Peter slows it down. “I threw the first pitch, and something in my arm just gave out. I was really focused, doing everything my coach said to do, perfect form, but halfway through the windmill, my rotator cuff just snapped. It was like my body moved outside of my control. It was really scary.”

Julianna holds Peter’s gaze for a serious, silent moment before she bursts into self-conscious giggles. He’ll probably cut before that.

“I feel so ridiculous talking about this stuff, you know?” she says. “Even though it’s pretty serious, it just feels like stupid high school bullshit.”

Peter nods. If there’s anything _Vandal_ ’s taught him, it’s that a lot of things can be both.

They talk to the catcher next, a short, stocky girl with light-brown twin braids.

“It’s hard to see behind the mask and everything, but I swear there was some kind of shadow around Julianna,” Emily says. “I’ve been catching for her since we were in the eighth grade, and I’ve never seen her arm move like that.” She shudders. “It was kind of scary.”

There’s only so many times they can show the footage from the TV station, slowed down and sped up and zoomed in. But they’re in luck—there’s Snapchat video, too, taken by a sophomore girl and zoomed right in on Julianna. Peter and Sam watch it, and there’s definitely something there. There’s really no other way to describe it than a _shadow_ , something that appears right before the pitch and vanishes when it’s over.

“So, Zohra,” Peter says. “Why did you take this video?”

“It was my first varsity game,” she says, grinning widely. “And I’m only a sophomore, so I was really excited, even though I wasn’t starting or anything. I was on the bench, but I have an iPhone X, so I zoomed way in.”

The video is way clearer than blowing up the other footage they have. Peter replays it a couple of times with Zohra still in the room, and they watch it together.

“It looks kinda like a bird,” she says, squinting and tilting her head to the side. “Like our mascot. The lady hawks.”

Peter replays it again, and he can see it too. It does look a little like a hawk (or a lady hawk; he’s not too sure of the difference), pecking at Julianna’s shoulder right before her rotator cuff snaps. “It does.”

They all puzzle over it for a few more minutes, and then Zohra gets a text. “I should probably go,” she says, picking up her backpack. “My boyfriend Matt’s waiting outside.”

Peter thanks her again, and gets her number for follow-up before she goes. Sam cuts out a little paper bird to put on the timeline next to the home opener. “I have to laugh,” he says. “Or, I have to cut out a little paper bird to put on the board that will make Peter laugh.”

Peter does laugh. He passes Sam a thumbtack and watches him pin the cutout on the board. They’ve known each other for years, and it still surprises Peter how easily charmed he is by Sam. He wonders if that shiny feeling will ever fade. Or if there’ll ever come a day when he, like Zohra, can refer casually to his boyfriend Sam.

* * *

Sam stands in front of the board, considering. “Okay, so there’s definitely something fishy—or, birdy? can I say birdy?—about Julianna’s arm, but what about the no-hitter? Isn’t that something that could happen to any high school softball team?”

_I’m the first one to admit we aren’t exactly sports fans, but I wasn’t so sure. We took a look at the league records to find out._

“So, this is the scorecard of the no-hitter,” Peter says, holding up a sheet of cardstock covered in complicated diagrams and markings. “It tells us what happened in every play—who got on base, drew a walk, even what position player caught a ball.” There’s a box on the floor between them full of cards. “Sam and I have been looking through the scorecards of the Grover Beach Tigers, and they don’t exactly have the best record.”

“You mean, they’re shit,” Sam supplies.

“Yeah, they’re shit. It looks like they have more losses than wins in every season in the past ten years.”

Sam nods and picks up a scorecard from last year. “What’s the name of that pitcher? Ella?”

“Ella Tan.”

“Look at this.” Sam holds it out to Peter. “She gave up sixteen runs in one game.”

“Is that a lot?”

Sam laughs. “Yeah, dude. This isn’t football.”

“Is that a lot for football?”

“Oh, my god.”

Armed with a box of scorecards, Google Sheets, and an online baseball glossary, they calculate some statistics. The camera focuses briefly on his computer screen before turning back to Peter, who is entering numbers as Sam reads them off.

“Ten runs, four innings,” he says, winging the card at Peter, who dodges with moderate success. “That’s the last one.”

Peter hits enter, and a final box of the spreadsheet fills up. “This is Ella Tan’s ERA, or earned run average. It’s a calculation of how many runs she gave up for every nine innings pitched, pretty commonly used to evaluate pitchers in softball and baseball. Her ERA last season was 10.2.”

Sam grimaces. “So, no way she threw a no-hitter on her own.”

“I guess,” Peter says, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes. The ERA important, he knows, but it doesn’t feel good to have spent hours combing through data to come up with a number that means nothing to Peter. Softball, witchcraft—what was he thinking? Their first two cases were out there, sure, but Peter didn’t need to cross-reference with an online glossary to understand what was going on. This feels like stumbling around in the dark, and he misses the firm footing of fact, or at least logic that makes sense to people who believe in science. Sports and spellcasting both leave so much up to chance. “I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, it could have— What are we even doing here? Looking through old sports records? Making a documentary that no one’s even going to watch?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Witchcraft, Sam? What was I thinking?” Peter takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You were right. We shouldn’t have come here.”

“Hey,” Sam says. Peter doesn’t look up.

“Hey, dude.” Sam puts an arm around his shoulder, and Peter leans into it. “Peter. Who fucking cares if it’s Randall behind the camera again instead of some guy with a beard and a wife and kids who does this for a living. No offense, Randall,” Sam adds to the camera.

“None taken.”

“If it’s for Netflix, for Vimeo, or just for us, dude,” Sam says, squeezing Peter, “it’s not about the audience.”

“Yeah,” Peter concedes, because that’s easy to say, but he would love to still be available streaming right now to a hundred million people.

“The old Peter Maldonado didn’t care about viewership,” Sam says, and Peter thinks he might be right. “What about finding the truth?”

Peter nods. He’s embarrassed at having lost sight of what’s important for even a moment, and impossibly glad to have Sam to keep him on the right track.

Sam squeezes his shoulder again, and with that has clearly filed what he considers to be his quota of sage advice for the night. He says, “Maybe the real audience was the mysteries we solved along the way.”

It would be a terrible idea to kiss Sam right now. They’re in the middle of an investigation and actively being filmed by a friend from high school; they talked about this and _agreed_ it would be a terrible idea to kiss, or date, or do anything while working on a project together, and Peter hasn’t changed his mind, still feels that the logic and the reasoning is as sound as it ever was, but that doesn’t make it any easier not to. He doesn’t look at Sam, because he’s probably thinking the same thing. In high school, Peter thought there could be nothing worse than having an unrequited crush on your best friend, but now he’d choose that over standing here in a room with Sam, knowing that Sam feels the same way, and knowing that they can’t do anything about it.

* * *

The next day there are interviews scheduled about the no-hitter, and Peter doesn’t feel ridiculous about it at all. Well, he absolutely does feel ridiculous, but it’s something he’s grown used to investigating spray-painted dicks and elaborate shit crimes; what he doesn’t feel anymore is discouraged. They sit down with Ella Tan after she gets out of school, and Peter feels just as driven as the day he first pitched Dylan’s story to Sam. He wasn’t thinking about fame or fortune then, and he can’t be thinking about them now.

“You probably wanna ask me about my no-hitter,” Ella says. Peter hasn’t even asked her a question yet.

“Yeah, uh. Tell us what happened that day.”

“It was surreal, dude,” Ella begins with the air of someone who has told this story with great gusto many times, “like someone was guiding my arm. After the first couple innings everyone knew what was gonna happen, but no one said anything to me on the bench, y’know? ‘Cause when you have a no-no going, you can’t jinx that shit. It was almost a perfect game, too, but I hit this one girl in the sixth. Felt really bad about it. You never get used to that.”

“Ella, we calculated your statistics for the last few seasons, and your earned run average is over 10. Why do you think you were able to pitch so well for this game?”

“Oh, ‘cause I got high that Saturday. I think I’m, like, the Dock Ellis of high school softball.”

“Dock Ellis?” Peter says.

“That dude who pitched a no-hitter high as balls on LSD in the 70s. I felt his energy with me.” She brings her hand to her heart.

“But you weren’t actually high during the game.”

“No, but like… My sister got me edibles for the first time the _weekend before._ Coincidence? I don’t think so. A bunch of the guys from the baseball team were cheering me on too. I bet they knew about Dock.”

Peter looks over to see Sam roll his eyes.

When Ella’s gone, Peter says, “She wasn’t very helpful.”

“But we can definitely cross her off the suspect list.”

“Yeah, for sure,” Peter says, looking around for his mechanical pencil. The list (which is more of an interview list, really; they’re not up to the suspects part of the game yet. But who’s counting.) is in front of him on the table in his compact handwriting.

Sam removes a blue Bic pen from his pocket and clicks it once in the air.

“That’s not the right—” Peter swallows his complaint about mixing writing media as Sam reaches over him to cross off Ella’s name. Sam brushes close enough that Peter can feel his body heat, and he has to be doing this on purpose. It’s infuriating, but, well. Peter doesn’t move out of his way.

Peter will probably cut this out. There’s only so much the viewers need to see.

They move on to the school’s footage of the player who was hit by the pitch: Chani. It looks, again, like some sort of shadow is guiding the ball, nebulous and dark and vaguely bird-like. He and Sam meet her at lunch that day and sit on the top of a picnic table on the school’s front lawn while she eats a peanut butter sandwich.

“Halfway through the season,” Chani says in between bites, “we play Grover Beach, and their pitcher is working on a perfect game. Which would be crazy uncommon for any team, but it’s _Grover Beach_. Against us. Anyway, so, it’s the bottom of the sixth, and I come up to bat. The first pitch is a fastball, right down Broadway, and I’m like, oh, finally, something I can hit! But then maybe 2 feet from the plate, right in the middle of my swing, it just curves out of nowhere and hits me right in the side. And, like. I know what a curveball looks like, and this wasn’t it. It was like a hand moved the ball in the air.”

“Do you think there’s any chance the pitcher hit you on purpose? Or that she just missed?” Peter asks.

“No way. I swear I saw a shadow, like when Julianna hurt her arm.” They watch the footage together on Peter’s laptop, and there it is again. Dark and ephemeral, but definitely there.

Peter turns back to her. “Chani, can you think of any reason that _you_ were the one targeted by this?”

Chani chews pensively for a moment. “Well, I’m one of the captains, and Juli is our ace pitcher, so I assumed it was just supposed to be directed at the team. Maybe someone does have something against me.”

“But what about the pentagram?” Sam asks. “Wasn’t that kind of against the whole team?”

“That could be totally unrelated,” Chani answers, fast, her words sticky with peanut butter. “Maybe it’s a cover-up or something. Like on crime shows when the guy plants a bomb in an office building and blows up a bunch of innocent people when he really just wanted to kill the secretary.”

“Uh, okay... I know you think it wasn’t Alexis, but is there anyone at school who has a grudge against you?” Peter asks.

Chani takes an apple out of her bag and polishes it on her sweatshirt. “I guess this girl Beth, maybe. Beth Flynn. She and her friend Jennifer work at the concession stand at games and they always burn my chicken fingers.”

Sam squints at her. “Maybe they’re just not very good at making chicken fingers.”

“It’s not just that.” Chani laughs. “They’re on the cross-country team, I think they’re jealous that softball gets more funding. Last year it was either new uniforms for their team, or new lights for the softball field. We got the lights.”

Peter nods, and adds Beth and Jennifer to his interview list, right below Alexis. In pencil.

* * *

_This is Alexis Moskowitz._ There’s a shot of Alexis before her interview, and some B-roll of her walking through the halls, getting something from her locker. She has long black hair and looks, in a word, goth. _Senior and advocate for the addition of a modern witchcraft class, she’s the student body’s number one suspect. Sam and I weren’t so sure._

“Everyone thinks I did it,” Alexis says moodily. “Even though I didn’t. And I know I wasn’t exactly prom queen before this, but now no one will talk to me.”

“Why do you think people suspect you?” Peter asks.

Alexis laughs. “Have you even seen me? I look like a witch. But I didn’t do it. I was at a wiccan convention on the day Julianna broke her arm or whatever, I can prove it.”

“A wiccan convention?” Peter says. “Doesn’t that make you seem, like, more guilty?”

“For a spell this big, you’d have to be there,” Alexis explains. She turns to the camera. “And I fucking. Wasn’t.”

“What about day the pentagram was spray-painted?”

“I was at home working on a science project.”

“Do you have any proof?”

“Well, the project got done. But my parents took my brother up to Paso Robles for a travel soccer game, so I was alone all day.”

“You’ve been trying to get a witchcraft class added to the schedule, right?” Sam says out of nowhere. Peter glares at him. They discussed it beforehand and made the collective decision that asking Alexis about this motive so early on might scare her away.

Alexis does look a little shaken, but she sits up straight and answers with confidence. “Yeah, I have, but the principal isn’t a believer. It’s like, if it won’t help kids get into shiny ivy league colleges, Mr. O’brien doesn’t care. But what about the rest of us, you know? I'm dyslexic, and I’m repeating Applied Geometry. We all know I'm not going to college. If La Panza High School had a witchcraft program, I could learn skills that would help me make a living.” Alexis slouches again, like she’s embarrassed at having been sincere for one moment. “Like, I’m trying to get witchcraft taken seriously here. Why would I go and fuck up the school’s beloved softball team?”

Sam shrugs and nods at her, but Peter can tell he isn’t completely convinced.

“What were you saying before about having to be there?” Peter asks, turning back to Alexis.

_We had been operating under the assumption that the magic against softball team could be done from anywhere, but maybe that wasn’t the case._

“Manipulation of humans is serious magic,” she explains. “Can’t be done remotely. Especially not something this specific. To get Julianna’s arm to move like that… you’d have to be within a half a mile, tops.”

Peter and Sam exchange a look. “Thank you so much for coming in,” Peter says.

They finish up with Alexis, and then Sam turns to Peter. “This is big, dude. Really big.”

“I know.”

“It totally narrows down the suspect pool. We have, okay. The softball team, obviously. And I think they have…” Sam thumbs through some photos they have of the field until he finds one with a shot of the concession stand. “Yeah, the chicken finger girls are in range, and whoever does the announcing. And maybe the umpire. Or the coaches.”

“I wish it was just the nine again,” Peter says, writing everything down on the white board. “That was so much simpler.”

“Short center.” Sam shakes his head in mock disappointment. Peter is thrilled to have learned enough about softball to get the joke: like the Morning Show, baseball has nine players, but softball has one extra position between second base and shortstop.

They still have far to go, but the narrative is starting to take shape. Peter is starting to feel it: the heady rush of the mystery that makes all of it—the late nights, difficult questions, indefinite tabling of his personal life—worth the trouble. When he’s really into a project, it feels less like directing a film than bringing a creature to life, like a cinematic Doctor Frankenstein, with Sam as a marginally more attractive Igor beside him. He can’t believe he ever lost sight of what this is about: not the viewers or fame or the money, which were all admittedly nice, but the story.

Sam pats him on the shoulder. “We’re big-time documentarians now. We can handle it.”

Arguably, as he and Sam have literally argued about, they are not at the peak of their documentary career. But Peter lets it slide. “What about not letting the fame get to your head?”

“I don’t know her.”

* * *

_Beth Flynn and Jennifer Stevens-Stromberg work at the concession stand at La Panza High School softball games. According to the district employment records, they were present at both games that had witchcraft involvement. Beth and Jennifer had access, but did they have motive?_

Peter and Sam are in the school’s records room, digging through file cabinets and boxes of paper.

“We already found the timesheet, dude,” Sam says, holding it up.

“I know,” Peter says, taking down another box from the shelf, “but I wanted to look at— There.”

_The softball team recently received a spike in funding, but I wanted to know if the money really came from the cross-country team. The principal insisted that the whole district supported the decision, but the proposed budget we found tells a different story._

Back in their headquarters, Sam holds up the proposal and explains to the camera, “Before putting a revised budget up to vote, the school board is required to have a period where community members can comment on the plan. There’s a lot of bullshit comments so far, but we’re gonna look through them all anyway. Because,” Sam says, taking a big sip of his iced coffee, “sometimes fearless journalism is staying up to an ungodly hour of the night reading misogynistic comments from a small town in California.”

Peter yawns. “Listen to this one: _This is reverse sexism. The rights of men are under attack!_ ”

“Oh my god, please tell me that’s from a fifty year old man who is prematurely going bald.”

“Nope,” Peter says. “A guy on the La Panza baseball team.”

“This one’s from Mrs. Ambos, a ‘concerned parent’: _Better lights for the softball field? No one will come to our sons’ baseball games anymore. Baseball is an American pastime and this budget proposal is unamerican and unjust.”_

“ _Unamerican_?” Peter says. “Where do they think the softball players are from, Mars?”

“Women are actually from Venus,” Sam corrects sagely.

“Right, how could I…” Peter trails off. Among all the ridiculous comments from people who think women should still be in home ec instead of calculus, he’s actually found one from Beth Flynn. “Beth left a comment,” Peter tells Sam, and they read it together. Peter will show a photo of the comment, and then read it in voice over: _The softball team at this school is treated like royalty, the rest of the sports teams might as well not exist! XC hasn’t had new uniforms in 20 years, why are we wasting money on fancy new lights?_

Sam raises his eyebrows at Peter. “Definitely enough rage there to burn some chicken fingers.”

 _But was it enough to put a curse on the team?_  

* * *

The next afternoon, Beth and Jennifer come in for their interview. It surprises Peter that they agree to be interviewed as suspects so easily, but maybe it shouldn’t. Sam checked, and they both follow the official _American Vandal_ account on Instagram. There are some perks of having your docuseries available for streaming in 200 different countries.

Beth and Jennifer get mic’d up, and they begin the interview.

“I do really hate the softball team,” Beth says.

“And we do burn Chani Friedman’s chicken fingers on purpose,” Jennifer adds, looking straight at the camera like she’s staring down Chani herself. “That bitch needs to be taken down a peg.”

“Right, uh.” Peter hands Beth a copy of the comment from the budget. “Did you write this?”

Beth snaps her gum. “I mean, yeah. Every year it’s like, how else can we throw money at the softball team? While we’re showing up to cross-country meets in uniforms that were made during fucking Y2K.”

“You’re okay saying this? You’re not worried people are going to think you placed the curse?”

“A lot of people hate the softball team,” Beth says, holding up the comment.

Jennifer rolls her eyes at Peter. “And you can check the security footage. We were there the whole time, frying chicken. Which takes a lot of concentration to get right, when you’re not trying to burn it. Although trying to burn it takes concentration too, because you have to get it just right so it’s not bad enough that they can ask for their money back, and also so that they’re not sure if it was an accident or not. Although I am telling you now that it was not an accident, _Chani_.” Jennifer smiles savagely at the camera, showing her canines. “So I mean, like. No way we could have cast any type of spells.”

“We didn’t used to burn chicken fingers last year,” Beth muses. “‘Cause, like. Hot baseball players.”

Jennifer nods seriously. “Moving the concession stand to the softball field ruined my social life.”

Peter waits until they leave before turning to Sam to say, “There’s security footage?”

Sam exhales mightily. “Not our most on-the-ball moment,” he admits.

Peter guesses he took for granted how good Chloe was at inducting them into the landscape of St. Bernadine - of course they weren’t as savvy about all the dynamics and drama as they had been at Hanover, but Chloe helped a lot. There’s a markedly different feeling investigating these witch crimes than there was for the Turd Burglar. She would have told them about any possible source of evidence.

Chani is different. She’s been warm and welcoming and clearly is grateful for their help, but she keeps her distance. She’s largely stepped back and let Peter and Sam do their work, maybe out of politeness. Peter thinks that journalistically, it’s probably cleaner—they’re not close to her, so there’s less of a conflict of interest. But from a practical standpoint, it’s harder than working with Chloe. In Bellevue, they would have known about the security footage.

Now that they know it exists, it’s not hard to track down the feed from the concession stand. On the dates of the crimes, Beth and Jennifer are doing nothing more illicit than stealing a few french fries from their red plastic baskets.

* * *

_The third crime is the one that caught our attention_ , Peter will say over a series of photos of the incident. _On October 14th, a thirty-foot pentagram was spray-painted on the outfield grass. Its removal was paid for by the district, but the principal declined to comment on the status of the school’s investigation._

“Now this one is interesting,” Sam says, holding up a photo of the pentagram. “The pentagram was done with the exact spray-paint they use to line the fields. It goes upside-down in the bottom of that little painting cart thing, which, by the way, probably works by magic.”

“No, it doesn’t. There’s a lever on the top that depresses the—”

“Okay, nerd.” Sam rolls his eyes. “It was done with the spray-paint they put in the non-magical, very normal painting cart thing from the shed, which really narrows down our suspect pool.”

“Only the coaches, captains, and lines painter had access to the shed.”

“Right.”

Peter gets up to write these groups on the whiteboard, but turns around to look at Sam, expo marker poised in hand. “Coaches are out,” he says, and Sam nods. They decided to throw out all adult suspects, even those with the means to have committed the crime—Peter’s great at coming up with motives, even grossly convoluted and illogical ones (as evidenced by the Gabi segment), but he’s come up empty.

“Here’s the captains,” Sam says, and reads off the list to Peter.

“Is that everyone?”

“Yeah. And the kid who paints the lines,” Sam adds. “Jason Moskowitz.” He leans back in his chair and puts his feet up on a desk, looking like he has deeply enjoyed stringing this out.

Peter stops in the middle of writing. “Moskowitz?” he asks. “As in, related to Alexis Moskowitz?”

“Yep. As in her twelve-year-old brother.”

Peter turns to the camera and raises his eyebrows. This is interesting.

Obviously, they interview Jason. His skin is more freckled than not, and he removes two beige rubber bands braces before they begin.

“I paint the lines on some of the high school fields on the weekends. I do the baseball field, usually, but sometimes the other guys who do it are sick or something, so Steve asks me to do the others. Steve’s the athletic coordinator. I’ve done the baseball field, the soccer field, the softball field, and the lacrosse field, which is just the soccer field but during the spring and they have me put in different lines. And once I did the track field, for track and field. But never,” Jason says, frowning seriously, “a pentagram.”

Peter reassures Jason that he isn’t a suspect. There are photos of Jason at his travel soccer game on the day of the third crime: taking a corner kick, huddling with his team, eating orange slices at halftime. His alibi is not under suspicion.

“Jason,” Peter says, “when you paint the lines, how do you get into the equipment shed?”

“I have a key.” Jason puffs out his chest proudly. “Steve gave it to me, and he told me to be really careful with it.”

“Have you ever given your key to anyone to borrow?”

“I would never,” Jason says, clearly offended that Peter would question his integrity like this. “I keep it in my bedroom in a secret place.”

“Did you bring your keys with you on the day the pentagram was drawn?”

Jason falters. “Um, no. I left them at home. But the house was locked all day,” he adds. “Alexis was home doing her science project, and she never answers the door because she says she can’t hear the doorbell. She always plays her feminist pagan heavy metal music really loud. So they must have been safe.”

Peter asks Jason the rest of the questions written down in his notebook, and then he leaves.

The door has barely closed behind him before Sam says, like it’s obvious, “So, Alexis stole the keys.”

“We don’t know that.”

Sam turns to Peter. “This is damning. It was definitely Alexis, dude. She had motive: the witchcraft class thing, and now we know she had access to the keys!”

“What about the distance? She has an alibi; there’s no way she could have cast the spells on Julianna and Ella from that far away.”

“Yeah, but her alibi is being at a _wiccan convention_. Maybe the whole coven channeled their witch powers together to do the curse from there! And,” Sam adds, “Alexis was the one who told us about the whole spellcasting radius. We shouldn’t have trusted her.”

Sam has a point. After everything that happened with Kevin last year, Peter shouldn’t have taken Alexis at her word. They didn’t get to where they are by accepting things at face value. Peter used to be so on the ball, scrutinizing every detail of every crime, but working on this project, it’s like things are out of focus. Like in the morning before he can find his glasses—no matter how hard Peter squints, the blurry shapes in his room won’t coalesce into distinguishable things.

This was a real oversight. He knows, intellectually, that it isn’t true, but missing a detail this big makes Peter wonder if he ever knew what he was doing. If that’s precisely why there is no billion dollar company lining up to stream their season 3.

No one ever said the high school docuseries game was easy. But he has to press on. Sam was right: it doesn’t matter if no one is watching or the whole world is, they’re just going to do their best. Peter takes out his laptop and starts Googling.

He says, “I don’t know, I still think it wasn’t her. Chani said Alexis didn’t do it, and I trust Chani.”

There are a few websites that purport to know the distances from which certain spells can be cast, and Peter opens the first one. “Look at this,” he says, and Sam comes around to look over his shoulder. “It says you need to be within five hundred yards to manipulate animals.”

“To paraphrase so many of my high school teachers, sorcery.wikia.com is not a reliable source.” Sam points to the address bar of Peter’s Chrome window, but stops just short of tapping the screen. It’s a small thing, but Peter is touched; Sam knows how he can’t stand smudges on his computer.

“I guess. Okay, even if Alexis just made up the half a mile thing, Chani believes she didn’t place the curse.”

Sam stands up straight, and his eyes light up. Peter knows that look: he’s just had a breakthrough. “Why should we believe Chani? Why is she above suspicion? I think,” Sam pauses for dramatic effect, “Chani and Alexis did it together.”

It’s so obvious once Sam has said it out loud. “Oh my god,” Peter says. “What if Chani and Alexis did it together?”

He’s transported back to banging on Lucas Wiley’s glass door in the rain, storming over to Kevin’s house after The Dump. How can Peter still be so stupidly trusting, after having that trust breached again and again? By Dylan, by Kevin, by Alexis—and now by Chani too?

Sam’s voice brings him back to the investigation. “Alexis wanted the witchcraft class, Chani wanted the softball team to get more attention, it all makes sense,” he says, and it does.

Peter takes a few deep breaths, and they edit together a segment on Chani and Alexis at breakneck speed. Once the idea has been planted, it’s easy to put together the pieces and see how they are responsible. It even makes sense that Chani would manipulate Ella’s one bad pitch to hit her.

It’s early evening by the time Peter and Sam finish editing, but they call in Alexis and Chani to see it anyway. Chani comes in her cleats and sweatpants; she must have had practice. Alexis looks as goth as ever.

They sit down in front of Peter’s computer. He texted them that he had some new evidence he thought they’d like to see, and he doesn’t say much more now. “This is what we found,” Peter says, voice clipped, and presses play.

He and Sam watch Chani and Alexis watch the clip: at first with intrigue, then apprehension, then astonishment at having been found out. The screen fades to black, and Peter closes his laptop.

Chani looks up at him, her eyes shining. “Peter, I— I’m so sorry.”

“You lied to us.” He’s been preparing for this moment since Sam had his breakthrough, but it doesn’t make it any easier. To look into Chani’s eyes and know that she lied to them, has been lying to them the whole time, called them here on completely false pretenses. “What the hell, Chani?”

“I’m so sorry,” Chani says again, taking a shaky breath. “I had to do it. After the first two curses, no one was taking us seriously. I had to do something to make people care. To make you guys care.”

“Do you know how many emails I have in my inbox of people who actually could have used our help?”

Chani opens and closes her mouth a couple of times before she speaks. “I do need your help.”

Sam scoffs. “What, to get some fucking press for your sports team?”

“No, I— we did the pentagram, okay? But I didn’t have anything to do with the no-hitter. Or hurting Julianna like that.”

“Why should we believe you?” Peter says. If the case they’ve built over the past month is a Jenga tower, Chani has just pulled out the bottom block. How can they continue to build when the tower has just collapsed beneath them?

“You think I would do this to my team?” Chani is well and truly crying now. She doesn’t wipe her face, and the tears roll down her cheeks. “I’ve known these girls since we were in little league. Longer. You have to believe me, I would never do this to them. Especially not to Juli.” Chani’s voice breaks. “I love her.”

Peter should maybe storm out right about now, but he finds himself wanting to believe her. Being too trusting is what got him into this mess in the first place, but he hears the truth in Chani’s words. Peter thinks about what he would do if Sam were being cursed by some unknown supernatural entity. He wouldn’t _not_ spray-paint a demonic symbol on the softball field.

Sheer curiosity wins out over anger. This was a huge breach of trust, obviously, but it was still a breakthrough; they still have more facts than they did yesterday. Peter can feel something coming. He can feel the answer, just out of reach.

He turns to Sam, who nods almost imperceptibly, and then Peter turns to Chani. “You have to tell us everything.”

Chani does. How she pulled aside Alexis one night at shul to convince her to help with the pentagram, stole the keys from under Jason’s bed while he was at the travel soccer game, did the spray-painting herself under Alexis’s careful supervision. “I’m really sorry for sidetracking the investigation,” she adds afterwards, biting her lip. “I hope you guys can forgive me.”

Sam smiles easily, but Peter narrows his eyes at her. He doesn’t say anything.

“Peter’s gonna need 2-3 business days on that,” Sam explains, squeezing Peter’s shoulders.

“I’ll write down my package tracking number,” Chani says, giving him a watery smile. “And I’m sorry for not telling you guys about the security cameras. I was afraid me and Alexis would show up on them.”

“I thought they were just pointing to the inside of the concession stand,” Peter says.

Chani frowns. “No, there are a ton of angles. You guys seriously didn’t know about this?”

“Yeah, well you—”

“Right. Sorry.”

Chani gets them the footage. It’s the least she can do.

* * *

Randall’s taking the night off for his cat’s 10th birthday, so Peter and Sam order Chinese food and spend hours combing through security footage in their hotel room. They’re sprawled on Peter’s bed in front of his laptop, watching hour after hour of softball games security footage. They’re not looking for anything in particular—it’s not as if someone’s just going to show up in the bleachers with a magic wand and a pointy hat—but this is their best lead.

Sam’s arm brushes against Peter’s as he shifts on the bed, and Peter jerks away. He can’t help but think of a night not unlike this one in Bellevue last year. Sam must be thinking the same thing. All night, they’ve been like magnets, repelling each other instantly when they reach for the keyboard at the same time.

That night in Bellevue didn’t go how Peter had expected. Every fantasy that ever played out in his mind was about the getting there, getting to telling Sam about his feelings. In his head it was always an immediate rejection, or, if he was feeling particularly hopeful, a movie kiss, a tasteful fade to black. But it didn’t happen like that. That night in Bellevue, they laid everything out in the open, and then (painfully and mutually) decided to put it on ice.

This has been the worst thing about growing up, Peter thinks. That nagging sense of responsibility that forces him to make good decisions. He can find out that his best friend of four years is in love with him, feels the same way, and then agree to put it all on hold for the sake of the documentary. He knows, logically, that doing anything with Sam while they’re still working together would be stupid. But that doesn’t make it any easier to hold back.

“Peter,” Sam says, his voice low. They’re facing each other on the bed now, barely watching the laptop screen. Peter raises an eyebrow, and Sam looks at him for a long moment, heavy with what they both know. “You have an eyelash,” he finally says.

When Peter doesn’t move to sweep it away, Sam reaches out his hand. Peter lets his eyes fall closed.

“Let’s just…” he says, so close to Sam that he barely has to say it at all. “Screw the doc.”

Peter opens his eyes and Sam meets his gaze, glances down at his lips and back up again. He swallows, and looks at the security footage still playing over Peter’s shoulder.

Peter recognizes that look before Sam even says anything. He sees something. Peter can already feel his pulse start to climb with the thrill of a new lead, but he wants, embarrassingly and only for a moment, for Sam to ignore it. For this project to end, even without an answer, so they can stop fighting this. It’s exhausting, not trying to actively get over Sam but just waiting, _waiting_ to not have to.

Sam still has that telltale glint in his eye, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, his eyes flick back down to Peter’s lips. He leans in and kisses Peter.

Kissing Sam is finding a clue, times a hundred. It’s solving a case Peter’s been working on for years, carefully filing away moments and looks and words as evidence. It’s late, and he’s tired, but he feels suddenly awake, like he could stay up for hours doing this. Peter wants, more than anything, to keep kissing Sam.

Well. More than _almost_ anything.

He pulls away, trying to hide how hard he’s breathing. “What? What did you see?”

Sam smiles at him, dazed for a moment, before snapping back into the investigation. “This,” he says. Sam pauses the video, and then zooms in on the top left corner. “That’s the baseball team, on the other field.”

“So?” Peter says. “They practice there every day, right?”

“Yeah, they practice there every day,” Sam says, waiting for Peter to get it.

“Oh, shit. Shit! That’s definitely within half a mile of the field!”

“I don’t know if we can see...” Sam says, already looking through the enclosing folder for other angles. He selects a video from the date of the first crime and fast-forwards to the first pitch.

“Zoom in on the corner,” Peter says. He reaches for the keyboard at the same time as Sam, but this time neither of them flinches away. Peter zooms in, and they watch.

He’s not sure what he was expecting. Chanting, burning sage, multicolored sparks? It doesn’t look like they’re doing baseball drills, but it also doesn’t really look like a magical ritual. From what Peter can make out, the team is in a huddle. They have the means to have committed the crime, being so close to the softball field, but without a clear motive, it’s equally as likely they could have been discussing strategy for their next game.

Peter should be disappointed, maybe, that it’s not yet a clear answer, but he can’t stop smiling. They earmark some files and talk about nothing, about their plans for breakfast, anything but what happened between them. It’s a conversation that Peter wants, somewhat desperately, to have, but he feels it falls under their tacit agreement to wait until the end of the case. Apparently, Sam thinks the same, because he doesn’t bring it up either.

Peter falls asleep thinking about the kiss. It was fun, it was _good_ , but he’s more preoccupied with what it meant. It’s not really any new information—Peter already knew Sam had feelings for him, has known for months now—but it’s so much more real. Like finding a previously undiscovered piece of evidence that sheds something in completely new light.

* * *

The next morning, Peter and Sam watch the footage again in front of Randall and the camera and point out what they came across. In the light of day, and after getting some sleep, they scrutinize the grainy video to see if there’s any more to be gleaned from it.

“Look at the name on that guy’s jersey,” Sam says, squinting at the screen. “Ambos. Why do I feel like I’ve seen that name before?”

It does sound awfully familiar. Peter stares at _Ambos_ in its bright red embossed letters for a moment, trying to figure out where he’s heard it before, until it hits him. “The budget proposal. Sam, the comments!” Peter springs up to get the manila folder from the desk. It’s full of photocopies they made of the comments on the school’s new proposed budget.

In all the pages of misogynistic comments, they didn’t see the pattern. But now that they’re looking for it, there’s complaint after complaint about the effects on the baseball team, and, they learn by flipping through the pages, _from_ the baseball team. Sam pulls up the varsity roster on Peter’s laptop to cross-reference, and there are a few comments from everyone but the backup catcher.

Sam reads out a few of the more colorful complaints about the baseball team being sidelined by softball. “ _Fuck the softball team, someone should put those uptight bitches in their place._ Wow.” They’re all horrible and sexist and vitriolic like that, or even worse. In a passable impression of Adam Savage, Sam says, “Well, there’s your motive.”

“The baseball team felt insecure about not having anyone come to their games, so they cursed the softball team to make them lose,” Peter says, nodding. “I think this is it.”

“We did it, Pete.”

Peter doesn’t answer. Instead, he pulls Sam to him and kisses him like they have all the time in the world. Which—now that the investigation is done, they really do.

* * *

The entire softball team assembles in the classroom to hear Peter and Sam’s findings. After figuring out the motive, they interviewed Matt Ambos and a couple of other players—they caved almost instantly when presented with the comments. It’s easy to say awful things through a computer screen, and to anonymously place a curse, but being confronted about it is a different thing.

The other captain orders pizza, and they turn off the lights and project a rough cut of the case for the team, omitting the confrontation with Chani. It’ll be in the final series, of course, but Peter saw no reason to include it now. Chani gives him a grateful nod from across the room.

When the video is done, Emily whoops, and then they all huddle up for a team cheer. Peter and Sam and Alexis stand awkwardly at the side, but Chani motions them over to join in. It feels embarrassingly good to be a part of something like this, even for a minute. Peter feels as though he finally understands fraternities.

There are a few more high fives, and then almost everyone puts their orange grease-stained paper plates and napkins in the trash and files out. Chani, Alexis, and Julianna stay behind. Julianna’s arm is still in a sling, but she excitedly tells Peter she’s been cleared to start rehab exercises in a week.

It’s great, amazing, exhilarating to have an answer, but Peter’s not sure how to proceed with wrapping things up. The softball team is surely spreading the word to the rest of the school, but there’s not exactly legal precedent for reporting incidences of witchcraft. At least, not since 17th century Salem.

“Who do we even report this to?” Peter asks.

Chani laughs, and hops off the desk she’s sitting on to crush Peter in a hug. She’s exactly as strong as she looks. “Peter,” she says into his chest. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” Peter looks over at Sam. They have a lot to talk about now that this project is over. The future is uncertain; he has no idea where the next few years will take him, but he hopes it’s not too far from Sam.

Sam smiles back at him, big and honest and open. Peter knows he’s thinking the same thing. For a moment they all bask in the contentedness of an answer.

“But seriously. What do we do with this?” Sam holds up the flash drive with the evidence.

“Oh, I can think of a few things.” Alexis looks positively devilish. It could be the sleep deprivation, but Peter can swear sparks fly out of her fingertips.

Peter turns to the camera. “I absolutely do not condone cursing the baseball team.”

Privately, Peter thinks, taking Sam’s hand on the way out, they deserve it.

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, to Chosenfire: I read your letter during Yuletide and was so inspired by this prompt! It only took me a few months to write, LOL. I hope you like this, and happy NYR!
> 
> Thanks to [Claire](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dittywitty) for beta reading and really helping me to make this fic the best it could be. 
> 
> I know this is chump change for a lot of authors on ao3, but this is the longest piece of fanfiction I've ever written! (So glad to take that title away from a dramione valedictorian race AU I wrote in high school.) I wrote this as a love letter to American Vandal and baseball and I hope that shows. I also hope it was successfully suspenseful! I would love to hear who you thought cursed the team, and if the ending surprised you :). Also, some BTS trivia: [the Dock Ellis story is true.](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dock-ellis-lsd-nohitter/) I didn't _not_ write this whole fic because I wanted to make a joke about it. I chose to set this fic in La Panza because it's a ghost town, and the characters Beth and Jennifer are fully in reference to the novel _Attachments_ by Rainbow Rowell. The title is a quote from Yogi Berra.


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